The website/blog of Stu Jenks. Below and to the left are categories where you can search for my photos, words and music. My e-mail is stujenks@gmail.com. Also you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, at my store at www.stujenks.org and on bandcamp. Have a blessed day, y'all.

March 17, 2017

In the past, when I’m feeling sorry for myself and need to know how good I really have it, I’ve grabbed my passport and drove to Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, to visit Father Kino’s grave and see the sights. The sights being a beautiful mission church within a militarized plutocracy with no middle class but with a desperate yet hard working poor. That is much of Mexico.

I've got some financial and employment challenges in my life right now that I can't really talk about. (I’ve recently signed a non-disclosure agreement.) Let's just say I have an uncertain future, and I'm jumping off a cliff, hoping to be carried by angels, but knowing full well, that God really owes me nothing. It's me and The Great Almighty together, along with some very good people. And again, I'm feeling a little sorry for myself and more than a bit frightened. So off to Mexico I went last Wednesday. This time it wasn’t Magdalena I traveled to, but the tiny village of Oquitoa, near Caborca. Home of one of the loveliest Padre Kino missions, or so I was told. I had never been there before. So off in my Pathfinder I went.

Images from the road seen, but not photographed:

a) Federal Police asking me at a road block on Rt. 15, why I’m traveling in Mexico. Me, not able to speak much Spanish, and him, speaking broken English. We had a hard time communicating. I said words like “Caborca” and “Kino Missions” and “Photographs.” The cop just stared at me and finally waved me on. Policia Federals are scary folk. Everyone I’ve ever seen over the years has an AR-15 or some sort of fully automatic weapon slung over their shoulder.

b) The women in the toll booths were so sweet. I said “Buenas Tardes” and as I left, I said “Via con Dios.” They said something religious back to me, like ‘also with you.’ I didn’t fully understand their words but I did understand the kind look in their eyes.

c) All major roads in Northern Sonora are toll roads and they cost a lot. I spent $11 US traveling one way to Altar. That’s a lot of pesos. No one is on the roads except truckers and wealthy Mexicans in new SUVs. Poor people drive on dirt or narrow paved roads.

d) None of the roads, include most of their Interstates, have shoulders. That gives one pause because if you fall off the shoulder, it’s a hard one foot drop down. No cellphone surfing by anyone. All the drivers I saw were very careful and observant, because they had to be.

e) Very few diet soda choice at the Pemex Gas station. Bought a weird tasting Pepsi with Ginseng in it. No diet sodas in the drink machines either at the Highway 2 rest area. But ten selections of Coke and Pepsi.

f) I was in the town of Altar, heading north on a two lane, when suddenly Federal Police in a black pickup stopped in the middle of the intersection. They turned on their blue lights and two officers jumped out, fingers on the triggers of their automatic weapons. Everybody came to a halt. We all sat still. They wave us through. As I passed by, I saw the police, guns at the ready, walking toward a house. I didn’t look back.

g) On rural Rt. 43 outside of Altar, I fell in love with this amazingly beautiful two land paved road. No shoulders on either side. Trees and grass grew right up to the pavement. In the few miles I drove to Oquitoa, I saw only two cars.

h) I thought I might miss Oquitoa, it being so small, and road signs being scarce in Mexico. I was wrong. Hard to miss a beautiful small church built in late 1600’s on top of a hill, surrounded by hundreds of new and old graves and tombs.

Images that were photographed:

I was the only one there on Wednesday. The church was locked but I didn’t care. The grounds were stunning. I carried Pamela’s Baby Rocking Chair onto the church grounds. I asked the spirit of the 9 year girl who was buried under a large slab if I could put my sister’s chair on top of her. I heard nor felt no negative reply. The air smelled of beef cooking somewhere. A dog barked once or twice, but mostly it was the silence that touched me. No cars on the road. No planes overhead. No semis in the distance. Just a soft wind and stillness. Even in the most remote parts of America where I’ve traveled, like Horseshoe Canyon in Utah for instance, you still hear planes fly over. You still hear a big truck way over there. But not in Oquitoa. It was the most beautiful lack of sound I’ve ever not heard.

I took my pics. I said my prayers. Time to go before it gets dark. I now drove the back way to Nogales across the mountains. The road looked paved on the map. It was. For about half the way. Last 30 miles were dirt. It was one of the nicest dirt roads I have even driven. A single track but you could pull over if and when you needed to.

The sun set as I drove. I saw six cars in those 30 miles. And one semi tractor trailer truck.

January 27, 2014

"...Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte...," prayed the five women at the church this afternoon.

I wept as they said their Hail Marys over and over, around and around, a chant of my hemisphere and desert.

"God, where do I got from here?" I thought, not saying my prayers aloud. "I need your help. Guide me with intuitive thoughts, and by the actions and words of people," as the five women said again and again, "...Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte..."

August 17, 2010

The breaks are just too gnarly here, with the strong rips and all. Plus I’m just a beginner, a grom, surfing mostly wave scraps. But it hasn’t rained recently so there shouldn’t be much sewage in the water, and it is a beautiful day; but there might be a dead cow or two, bobbing in the sea. That doesn’t bother me. It’s the rips that scare the hell out of me. I’ll just walk along the shore, take in the crashing sound of the beach breaks, and feel the warm sand between my toes. I'll surf another day.

[Note: The above image and story are from earlier this year. Today, August 17th, I'm in Southern Mississippi, soon to drive to Vicksburg. And last night, I drove through what I found out this morning was a tropical storm. Makes senses. I pulled over into the little town of Tickfaw, Lousiana after large parts of trees flew in front of my car. Talked with a trucker named James at the Shell station there while we waited for the storm to pass. I'll tell that story later. Hell of a nice man though. Oh. I'm same and sound but it was quite the frog strangler last night. I've seen rain like that, but I've never driven through a storm like that before. But you know me. It was fun, and I got some videotape of it all while driving over Lake Ponchartrain. Soon to be on a YouTube near you.]

January 08, 2009

With the incoming Obama administration looking toward more important issues, and with ex-Governor Janet Napolitano at the helm of Homeland Security,
perhaps they will let the New Fence go unfinished. It's a colossal waste of
money. Guess how most bad guys get in the USA? Do you think they hike
across hundred of miles of hot desert, sharing water and food with the
poor, who are making the trek to wash our dishes and process our pork? Nope.
The criminals/terrorists/creepoids have papers. Real or fake papers. And they cross at Juarez, Nogales, Douglas, and Tijuana 'legally'. This fence just hinders those unfortunates who are trying to come to America to make a little money, at jobs most Americans don't want to do anymore.

So stupid. So wasteful. And if you ask me, so racist. To paraphrase my friend Rocco, "If the illegals walking across the border were Swedish, the first thing we'd do is ask them out for a date."

So here's a pic of the fence from a few miles away, from a hill high in the Monument. And another photo of
a natural gateway made by two Live Oak trees. Has a bit of 'Alice in
Wonderland' feel to it.

Anyway. May we all enjoy the new year 2009, in spite of
the lagging ecomony. Kiss your loved ones. Forgive those who have hurt
you. Forgive yourself most of all. Make a little Art and Music. See a
good movie. And hugs and kisses all around.

August 11, 2007

This land
hasn’t been over-grazed, and over-developed like up North. Not enough
cattle, not enough money, I suppose. I’d be hard pressed to even try
walking through that thick emerald-green jumble of Mesquite, Creosote
and those bushes I don’t know the names of. But I’m not walking here,
not like the bushwhack through the bramble south of St. David a couple
hours ago, to watch a flash flood rise. No, this afternoon, I’m driving
to Fronteras, to see the ancient village where Cochise used to steal
cattle from, and to maybe take a picture or two for “The Apache Wars”
book. Not raining here now. Can tell it did, not long ago,
from the fresh puddles in the road. Can’t tell if that black cloud is
moving away from me or coming toward me. Already had to take one detour
today when they closed the route to Bisbee due to water on the road.
Went only a few miles on Davis Road, east of Tombstone, when the water
stopped me. A fire engine was there, with two firemen and one
firewoman. I got out of my truck and as I walked toward the fireman
with the handlebar moustache, he looked at me, then looked at my four
by four, then without speaking gave me this look. The look said “Ah,
don’t worry. You can easily make it through this. Go on through, my
good man.” I smiled and said only “OK”. Two minutes later, I’m plowing
through two feet of water, passing a stalled Mercedes, and having a
hell of a time pushing hundreds of pounds of water out of my way. But
lo and behold, he was right. Got through just fine. Only harm was that
my pulse was up to about 120 or,and that's good for me. At least in spurts it is. Anxiety-produced Cardio workout. Crossed into Mexico at Agua Prieta. Easy to get into
Mexico, hard to get out. Just had three Federales in uniform look at my
truck and then looked away as I drove by. No more need for a visa to
enter this part of Mexico but I’ll need a passport to get out, when the
new law goes in effect in a few months. Don’t need it today, but I have
it with me anyways. Got lost almost immediately. Well, not lost
really. I knew if I kept going south I would eventually hit Mexico
Route Two. More worried that I’m miss the road to Fronteras. Not many
traffic signs in Mexico. Everyone who lives there knows where they are
and where they're going. Not a whole lot of gringo traffic here. Couple young
men smiled and waved at me just a while ago, as I slowly drove down a
steep muddy street in a poor Agua Prieta neighborhood. I smiled and
waved back. It was as if they were saying, “Cool. An American who isn’t
scared to come down and see us!” or they could have been smiling out of
a fearful respect for a White Man in the Black SUV. May be a man from
the Juarez cartel heading west. I prefer to think the former. Found the road to Fronteras after all. There was a sign. I’ve been on
Route 17 about twenty minutes now. According to my map, I cross the Rio
Nacozari at Cabullona, and then just another half hour to Fronteras. I
crest a hill and see traffic stopped up ahead. A sign say ‘Construction
Ahead” in Spanish. Maybe they are working on the road, but on a
Saturday? I stop just shy of a railroad crossing, get out of my truck
and casually light a smoke. I can’t see much except that cars, buses and
trucks are stopped and that there is a little town that is on either side of
the road. Maybe it is just construction. But time passes and nothing is
moving and people have that relaxed look, as they lean on their cars,
like we are going to be in for a while. I finish my smoke, grab my
Canon, leave the bag and begin to walk into the village of Cabullona. Now I’m a
little nervous being in Mexico, not for the usual paranoid false
reasons that most Americans have (I’ll get robbed, I’ll get mugged,
I’ll be shunned). Sure, there is some intrinsic danger just being a very
poor country, but mostly the white northerners are simply projecting
their dislike of the Other onto the natives, figuring they hate me as
much as I hate them. No, for me, I’m anxious because I can’t speak the
language. I’ve tried to learn Spanish but I have no gene for foreign
language. I misprounce words horrible, due to taking French in High
School, and I can’t remember anything these days. But I do know how to
be polite in Spanish and I just pray my vehicle doesn’t break down and
I have to pantomime my way in and out of car repair. I quickly see
that I stick out like a sore thumb. I’m the only American within fifty
miles, and people are looking at me, but then, after seeing me smile,
they smile. We all smile. “Buenos Tardes,” I say to a couple of guys getting out of a truck. “Tardes,” say the shorter of the two. All is well. Within minutes I see why we are stopped. The Rio Nacozari is
flooded and there is no bridge. Well, there is the beginning of a
bridge; the concrete supports have been poured, looking like tall gray
megaliths of cement, walking across the stream. Looks like they were
constructed a while ago. Takes a while to build a bridge, a road, in
Frontier Mexico. I look toward the river and its banks
and it’s a party of sorts. The tan-brown muddy water is rushing fast,
looks to be about four or five feet of water. Standing waves appear and
disappear, and along both banks, a good fifty to hundred people, are out of
their cars and trucks, staring at the river, like it was a TV showing a
movie. Kids play here and there. Folks wander over to a cantina to get
a taco and a beer. Teenagers flirt with each other, like they do
everywhere on a Saturday afternoon. No hurry. No worries. The river
will subside when it does and there is nothing I can do about. Might as
well stretch my legs and get something to drink.
I have my
camera but I don’t take a lot of pics, even though the faces and the
clothes are wondrous. But the Mexicans aren’t here to be my
entertainment. There are just waiting for the waters to recede. I take
a couple of shots of the river and try and get some people in the shot
without them knowing. If space aliens came down from Andromeda and
started taking pictures of me, walking down Congress Street on my way to The Cup, I
would find it irritating. I don’t want to piss off the locals. I’m standing on a tall hill look at the river, mesmerized like
everyone else. Then I hear and see a pickup, on the other side,
inching his way toward the rushing water. Everyone, man, woman and
child on both sides of the river, watches this unfold. It just a Ford
pickup, nothing special, might be a four by four, might not. No big
lift package on it. He reaches the water's edge, puts two wheels in,
revs the engine, and pops the clutch. He explodes into the
water but rather than going straight across to the other side, he take a
hard right and hugs the east bank. Muddy water flies up from either
side of the truck. The water is easily up to his doors, but he isn’t
bogging down. He’s making progress. The engine sounds like a dozen
angry dogs growling loud. He continues downstream, then disappears behind some
trees and none of us know where he is, but we still hear the engine,
those dogs. He hasn’t stalled. The growl continues for a while and then the
engine is quieter but not dead and then we see him coming down a
one-line dirt path on our side of the river. The driver’s trying to act
cool, like he does this everyday, but his wide eyes and big smile
betray his enthusiasm. He hits the pavement, doesn’t even stop and head
north toward Agua Prieta. No one applauds, even though I
felt like it. But many men did do the slow-nod-of-the-head, denoting
respect for what the man did. Then men start getting in
their trucks, trucks of similar size and bigger. I know what they are
thinking. ‘If he can get across, so can I.’ I look and yea-boy, another
truck is going for it, from the other side of the river. I head down the hill I’ve
been standing on, and then walk down the dirt track where the first truck
materialized. I hear someone else pushing their truck into the high rpms.
I take the lens cap off my Canon and process quickly toward the river.
By the time I get there, Truck # 2 has already crossed and Truck
# 3 is make the trek. God, I wish I had a longer lens. # 4 is poised on
the bank. Only one truck at a time. Only one underwater track to drive on. Too much one way or the other and you are in deep. #3 makes
it. #4 is in the water. Now, we have a #5 on my side of the river,
going to school on what he can see from the path that #4 is taking. #5
hits the surf. This is the easy part, this side of the river. He's doing
good, shooting across the channel, then hugging the bank, then into the
hellhole of swirling riverwater near the end. He almost stalls. He hits the accelerator hard.
No water flies now. He’s barely moving. But then it pops like a cork
and out he comes, onto dry land. A few minutes and a half a
dozen trucks later, I see a Chevy with Arizona tags coming across
the river toward me. Vanity plates read “Cienega”. Spanish for marsh.
Probably the name of his company. He sees me taking his picture. He looks Hispanic. I lower my camera. I’m grinning from ear to
ear. He powers out of the water, is on the dirt track now, but he slows
and through his open window, he yells to me, in perfect English. “Now that was a lot of fun, eh?” “Yes it is,” I yell back.

After a half hour, and a few dozen shots, I head back to my
truck. Still sitting by the tracks, a few more cars behind me now. I stow the camera, take a pull off my soda and start the
truck. Not going to Fronteras today. I'm not going to try fording this
river, even though I bet I could. I couldn't have asked for this much fun, even if I had prayed specifically for it. Watching stock trucks challenging a
roaring river? Yea, man. And not your spare truck but your work truck, your only truck. Not that's courage. Talledega has
nothing on these guys. I do a three-point turn and head back toward the U. S. of A.

An old sofa sits under the shade of a Mesquite tree. This is the
image of my feelings of Mexico: Poor yet relaxed; desperate at a slow
pace; religious, yet on the verge of a loss of faith; accepting of
death, but wishing there was less of it. All I need is a roadside cross
next to the couch and the symbolism would be complete. The Cross is implied, in my mind only. I take the shot, and know I have gold in my camera.

An hour and a half later, I’m at the border, two cars back from
talking to Mr. Border Patrol Man. Been in line for a half hour. No
hurry, no worries. A tan mutt, not dirty, not clean, walks between the
cars. He looks toward the north, toward America, thinks about and then
turns back toward Mexico. If dogs run free, why can we?, as Dylan once
said. My time comes and I pull up to the officer. White guy,
short, pudgy. I open my door and hand him my driver’s license and my
passport. “Do you have anything to declare?” “Nope.” “What is your purpose in Mexico?” “I went down to take some photographs for a project I’m working on.” “Photographs?” say Mr. Border Patrol Man, with puzzled look on his face. “Yea, I was heading down to Fronteras but the river was too
high, so I couldn't get across, so I just came back,” I say, with a little
grin on my face. Mr. Border Patrol Man lets out a big laugh. “You are one brave man,” he says. I shrug. I don’t think so. Nothing to be afraid of, if you ask me. “Well, I guess if you ain’t looking for trouble, you won’t get into trouble,” say Mr. Border Patrol Man. “That’s the way I see,” I say.
He goes back in his booth, looks at his screens. Probably looking
to see if the license plate registration he’s got on his screens, from
the images taken by the four cameras that surround me, matches my
passport. It should. He walks back over to me and hand me my passport and my license. “I tell you, those better be some award winning photographs, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
He laughs again. I reach over to my wallet, put my license back
in it and pull out one of my business card. I hand it to Mr. Border Patrol Man. “If you’re interested, check out my website.” We both laugh now.